Photo By Tech. Sgt. Sara Kolinski | 104th Fighter Wing Airmen spend the regularly scheduled drill weekend conducting a...... read more read more
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The 104th Fighter Wing conducted a four-day base wide readiness exercise Nov. 2 – 5, 2023 at Barnes Air National Guard Base.
“The REX provides the Wing the chance to test interoperability with other local military partners (Bradley, Westover), preparing Airmen for their worst day and preparedness for a high end fight with near peer adversary,” said Maj. James Ingari, 104th Inspector Generals office director of inspections.
The REX is designed to give Airmen the chance to set aside their daily tasks and hone the skills that will enable them to excel in a contested and degraded environment. Airmen worked 12-hour shifts to test their systems and processes, as well as their responses to scenario injects by the 104FW IG office. Over the course of the four days the wing flew 41 sorties and responded to 17 scenarios.
“The 104IG office has introduced complex wartime taskings and scenarios ever presented to the 104FW, and its members responded to and succeeded at all challenges presented to them,” said Ingari.
Airmen from across the base spent time performing their job while wearing body armor, the different levels of Mission Oriented Protective Posture gear, and other job specific gear. This included the crew chiefs and maintenance teams launching and catching our F-15 Eagles and the pilots flying them.
“A best practice I have seen here is the new command and control structure with A-Staff and incorporating intelligence into exercise planning to ensure more realistic scenarios and IG WIT team taking more of an observatory role and not solving problems for exercise players and allowing commanders to lead and assume more risk,” said Ingari
Coordinating such a large-scale training exercise requires support from every agency and team on base. The planning effort was led by the IG office and Wing Inspection Team members, who all strove to make the event as realistic and challenging as possible for the Barnestormers participating.
“We demonstrated our ability throughout the exercise to adjust to operational realities and changing threat environments while executing distributed control,” said Lt. Col. Ryan Randall, 104FW Deputy Chief of Staff. Many of the processes we were executing were new to our wing and everyone was pulling in the same direction to ensure that we accomplished our mission. Even though the many injects and scenarios proved extremely challenging, they helped us improve our readiness to be more combat capable and effective. Integration of all facets of the wing to execute our assigned role as the premier provider of combat power projection was the hallmark of our exercise.”
The success of the 104FW daily operations, deployments, and training exercises rely not only on members, but also the support of their family, friends, and community.
“Teams that excelled included the 104th Medical Group team with dislocated Expeditionary Medical Support and Casualty Collection Points, and the 104th Force Support Squadron – sustainment section for providing bed down, food and sustainment services for incoming personnel and forward deployers,” said Ingari. “Superior performers included Master Sgt. Adam Casineau who managed exercise attack teams, Master Sgt. Pat Greaney who managed Contingency Location Exercise Control for Agile Combat Employment movement, Senior Master Sgt. Thomas Pavelchak for planning and control throughout the exercise, and the 104MDG team with dislocated EMEDs and Casualty Collection Points.”
This training is critical to ensuring that Airmen are ready to respond to the mission at a moment’s notice. As an Air National Guard unit, the 104FW could be called on by the Nation’s President to respond to a federal mission, or by the Massachusetts Governor to respond to a state mission and support domestic operations at moment’s notice.
“While the A-Staff is a new concept to the Air Force and Air National Guard, we are extremely proud of the work we have done to integrate an operational A-Staff into day-to-day operations, create a deliberate crisis planning capability at the wing echelon, and redesign how we operate and implement C2 of assigned and attached forces,” said Randall. This is not only a new way of doing business, but a new way of thinking and integrating C2 forces into the joint environment to deter and defeat near-peer adversaries across every domain.”
| Date Taken: | 11.05.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 11.05.2023 13:39 |
| Story ID: | 457213 |
| Location: | WESTFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS, US |
| Web Views: | 204 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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